Cress Williams talks about his expectations of playing a DC Comics hero after his first DC role 22 years ago.

Over twenty years ago, on the ABC television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman starring Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain, Cress Williams guest starred as a variation on the villain from the Superman comics named “Baron Sunday.” The episode itself was called “Never on Sunday.”

Flash forward 22 years, and this morning at a Q&A hosted by The CW, we asked Mr. Williams if he had any idea of his super-powered future as one of DC’s premier heroes back in the days that he played a villain.

“You know, back then? No, because back then, it wasn’t a thing. It was kind of few and far between,” Williams admitted.

“We didn’t have the movies going on… I was just really stoked to be playing the villain. A lot of times villains are more fun, and I was a villain that actually survived… It wasn’t really a genre yet, but once it became a genre, yeah. I was hoping and felt like it was kind of ‘my destiny’ to play a superhero. I mean, I’m 6’5″ and I want to play a superhero. So, it felt like it should happen at some point, and just at the moment when I didn’t think it was going to, it happened.”

Things have certainly worked out well for Williams who now stars as Black Lightning.

“One of my best friends who is the comic book aficionado, he was just like ‘well, we’ve always said you should be playing a superhero. So they finally figured it out’!”